The Number on the Offer Letter Is Not the Cost
Every founder who has run payroll knows this, but it's worth stating plainly: the salary you put in the offer letter is not what that hire costs you. By the time you account for everything the role actually requires — taxes, benefits, tooling, space, management time, and the opportunity cost of a 3-month ramp — the real number looks very different from the one on the contract.
Here's a real breakdown, using a mid-level US marketing coordinator as the example. This is a role FilAm staffs regularly with Filipino specialists, which makes the comparison concrete and honest.
The Fully Loaded US Hire
Base salary for a mid-level marketing coordinator in a major US metro: $75,000/year.
- Employer payroll taxes (FICA, FUTA, SUTA): ~$6,800/yr
- Health insurance contribution: ~$7,200/yr (employer share of a standard plan)
- Paid time off (15 days + holidays): ~$4,300/yr in salary cost alone
- Equipment (laptop, peripherals, software licenses): ~$3,500 amortized over 3 years = ~$1,167/yr
- Office overhead (per-seat share of rent, utilities, internet): ~$6,000/yr if office-based; ~$0 if fully remote — we'll be generous and call it $2,000 for hybrid
- Recruiting cost (agency fee or internal time, amortized): ~$8,000–$15,000 — call it $9,000/yr at 12% of salary
- Onboarding and ramp time (productivity loss for 60–90 days): ~$4,500
Total fully loaded cost: approximately $105,000–$110,000 per year.
That's 39–47% above the offer letter number. For a fast-growing startup or agency, that gap is the difference between adding two people and adding one.
The FilAm Specialist
A vetted FilAm digital marketing specialist comes in at $4.50–$8.00/hour, depending on specialization and seniority. Let's run the math at both ends:
- At $4.50/hr × 40hr/wk × 52wks: $9,360/year
- At $8.00/hr × 40hr/wk × 52wks: $16,640/year
That's the fully loaded cost. FilAm handles compliance, payroll, and HR administration. You don't pay benefits, employer taxes, or recruiting fees on top. The number you see is the number you pay.
That's 6–11x leverage on the same work.
The Quality Objection: Let's Be Direct
The inevitable question: "Is the quality really comparable?"
For certain roles, yes — and in some cases, the Filipino specialist is more capable in the specific ways that matter for remote, async work. For other roles, no, and you shouldn't pretend otherwise.
Where Filipino remote professionals genuinely match or exceed US hires:
- Digital marketing (paid media, SEO, content strategy, analytics)
- Operations and project coordination
- Customer success and account management (non-phone-first)
- Graphic design and video editing
- Sales development and outreach (written-channel heavy)
- Business intelligence and reporting
Where local US hires remain the right choice:
- Roles requiring physical presence (field sales, in-person client relationships)
- Roles requiring US-specific professional licenses (legal, finance, healthcare)
- Executive leadership roles where US market intuition is critical
- Any function where enterprise clients expect domestic staff as a contract requirement
The Honest Recommendation
Nobody serious about this conversation is advocating for full replacement of a US team with remote Filipino professionals. That's not the play, and it's not what the math suggests.
The play is strategic hybridization. Keep your US-based roles where they generate irreplaceable leverage — strategic leadership, enterprise sales, local relationships. Replace or augment every function that can run on async, process-driven, output-measured work with a vetted Filipino specialist.
A founder running an 8-person team that spends $900K on payroll can realistically convert 3–4 of those roles to FilAm specialists without quality loss, generating $200K–$350K in annualized savings while maintaining or improving output per dollar. That capital gets redeployed into growth, infrastructure, or additional headcount where US hires genuinely add value that can't be replicated elsewhere.
The math isn't about cutting costs. It's about being intelligent with your most constrained resource: capital. Run it toward leverage.